Recovery

We're unveiling recent survey results from the research firm Omdia to explore the backup and recovery capabilities that MSPs offer today and plan to offer in the next 12 months. Take a look at what MSPs like you have in place now, what's on the horizon, and what Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud can do to fill a wide array of your upcoming backup and recovery needs with a single management console and a single agent.

Disk-imaging technology, faster storage, and new protocols have changed the average recovery time objectives (RTOs) from hours to minutes. But in the modern world, data is so critical that many businesses are working to reduce RTOs even further, and with good reason. Today a business that doesn’t have access to its data can lose $100,000 every hour, in addition to the potentially huge costs of recovering that data.

Microsoft SharePoint is a popular online collaboration tool used by many companies around the world. Since its introduction in 2001, the product has captured a large share of the market.

Just like your email, databases, ERP and CRM systems, SharePoint is now a business application that you must include in your data protection strategy in order to ensure maximum business continuity. However, SharePoint’s scalability and multiple deployment options can make backups challenging.

In today’s blog, I’d like to step away from the technical aspects of disaster recovery and focus on the human impact. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite books on the subject of predictability and inevitability: The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The book describes Black Swan events as unexpected and unpredictable. However, a person or organization can plan for negative events, and by doing so strengthen their ability to respond, as well as exploit positive events. Taleb contends in his book that people in general — and specifically within companies and enterprises — are very vulnerable to hazardous Black Swan events and can be exposed to high losses if unprepared.

Backup is important but it is just as important to remember that having one backup copy is sometimes not enough. For example, let’s assume that you backup your computer to an external drive, which you keep in your home office. If your computer crashes, you have the backup copy. However, if a fire breaks out in your home, it will destroy both your computer and the external drive.

At Acronis, we always work to provide the best service and while we strive for perfection it is a hard goal to achieve. Along the way however, its always nice to hear that we provided our best and we would like to thank Mrs R. from Dalla for her email. See by yourself:

Phew. The worst is over. You have identified, caught and dealt with the virus that threw you and your bosses out of the comfort zone for days. You have shut down all the affected servers – the data center is safe.

Like a soldier returning from a mission, you are dreaming of a peaceful rebuilding of everything that was lost. However, that is not what your bosses, your colleagues, and your company demand. They need the data center and all applications back. For them, the downtime is not over. Not yet.

So what do you do? You sigh and prepare for a long routine – install operating systems on each server, service packs, updates, drivers, applications, application updates, settings, etc. You know it will take many long hours, if not days to complete – and with number of affected servers, you are facing an uphill battle. You pray for luck that everything goes smoothly, and you do not have to restart from scratch any of the servers.

Most travelers trying to get U.S. travel papers processed during the past couple of weeks know about the U.S. consulate database crash that impacted 200,000 or more visa-seekers worldwide. The culprit, a simple software patch, caused the U.S. State Department’s central passport and visa system to crash on July 19. While the data was backed up, the system was not, causing visa processing to grind to a halt during the slow recovery process.

There's a data protection lesson from this situation that all companies can learn from: Quick, reliable recovery depends on backup strategies that protect all company data, including configuration data and application code.

To help organizations better understand the challenges of backup, disaster recovery and secure access, Acronis has created the "8 Noble Truths" of data protection. To view all 8 Noble Truths, please download the whitepaper. This is the sixth post in an eight-part series to help you protect your data: